The Project EXPORT Center for Excellence in Rural Health seeks to recruit and train health professionals and health service and medical investigators to reduce health disparities in rural settings through research, education, and service. A target population within the Center framework will be medically underserved and underrepresented minority populations residing in rural communities. The Center consists of five interrelated cores and combines the expertise and resources of four major institutions in the state of Illinois. The Centers Administrative core channels the efforts of the National Center for Rural Health Professions of the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford (UICOM-R), the Illinois Area Health Education Centers (IAHEC), the Health Research and Policy Centers (HRPC) of the University of Illinois Chicago, and the University of Illinois Extension (UIUC Extension). These combine to create an infrastructure on which existing programs can be expanded and new initiatives created to impact on health disparities affecting rural and underrepresented minority populations. Specifically, the Center will: 1) conduct research on topics related to chronic medical conditions exhibiting disparities like diabetes and arthritis and examine issues related to chronic pain and elder abuse; 2) serve as a resource for providing the background knowledge and skill development necessary for enhancing the capacity of rural, community-based populations to identify and solve their own problems; 3) sponsor grant competitions to encourage investigators to address the health needs and reduce disparities in local populations by using local expertise and community-based interventions; 4) offer educational and training opportunities in rural health professions and research careers, previously unavailable to youth residing in rural communities; and, 5) educate students of the health professions, health care practitioners, and policy makers on the extent and seriousness of health disparities and their prevalence in rural communities by offering forums and directions for resolving the problem. Overall, the Center addresses research questions related to chronic disease prevalence and clinical management, merges the agendas of biomedical science and behavioral and epidemiological research to address disparities from an interdisciplinary perspective and speaks to comparisons between rural and urban communities.